Officials from the Neukölln district office and the job center conducted an inspection early Wednesday morning at a homeless shelter on Bürgerstraße. Of the 61 officially registered individuals, only 34 were found. The rest were not in the facility, even though the job center covers the costs of their accommodation. The reason given for their absence was that the residents were “on vacation.”
Already during an initial inspection in March, residents had not been found. The district office then scheduled a follow-up check. Neukölln’s social district councilor Hannes Rehfeldt (CDU) announced that the incidents would be closely examined: “We will take a very close look at whether this is still compatible with regulatory accommodation.” The inspection also revealed that extensive construction work was underway in the four-story building and several rooms were being renovated—currently, there is not enough space for all 61 registered individuals.
The inspection is part of intensified checks of homeless shelters in Berlin. A Tagesspiegel investigation recently showed that private operators are making lucrative business with the facilities and that the system is vulnerable to abuse. In one case in Charlottenburg, an operator collected money over a longer period for homeless people who did not actually live there; the damage amounts to more than one million euros. In a shelter on Fuggerstraße, inspectors also found that registered individuals were not living in the former hotel.
Source: www.tagesspiegel.de
